abandoned

The Tome School for Boys was the last stop on our unplanned abandoned school road trip. After realizing that the asylum we wanted to go to was turned into a haunted house for Halloween, we decided that our best bet would be to go to a kitschy farm and poke at baby goats in the morning, then try to see if we could figure out how to get into this abandoned academy in the afternoon. It took a little bit of ingenuity (if you even want to call it that) and bickering, but needless to say, it was a successful day on both accounts.

Next stop on what accidentally turned into my abandoned school tour of the South: Alderson Academy.

Originally, plans included asylums and abandoned amusement parks, but as I’ve come to find out, time is never on my side. Asylums have been converted into cheesy haunted houses for the Halloween season, and amusement parks have been taken over by crazy gun-wielding fanatics. Here today, shot tomorrow. The safer bet? An abandoned Baptist academy whose only guardian are two adorable trailer park dogs, one who is now my best friend. And for once, this place isn’t even rumored to be haunted (I checked!).

After gallivanting around the country for the last 6 months, I have a gigantic backlog of photos that need some sorting and a blog that needs updating. I recently performed in a burlesque show where the MC mentioned this site and my adventures during my intro. If that’s not a kick in the pants to update this thing, then I don’t know what is.

A couple of weekends ago I took another road trip down south to see what abandoned treasures awaited me. Two years ago I visited Thurmond, WV, which is one of the many New River Gorge ghost towns that surround the area. After researching the town and reading up on the history, I found out about the hilarious rivalry between Captain William Thurmond and Thomas Mckell, the founder of Glen Jean and the infamous Dun Glen Hotel. Even though Glen Jean is not really a ghost town, I really wanted to re-visit the town to see what this infamous den of vice had left. (If you missed it the first time around, you can read the Thurmond vs. Glen Jean rivalry here).

Salton Sea has been on my list for a while, thanks to an OKCupid wannabe suitor. When I found out that it was a short drive from my sister’s house in California, I immediately recruited her for a post-Christmas visit. After all, we had to work off all the Christmas junk food somehow.

We were supposed to go last year, but that trip was put on hold when my sister went into labor 3 months prematurely; a month before my trip out there. And looking back, it probably wouldn’t have been the wisest decision for a lady who was 8 months pregnant to be traipsing around a toxic sea. So, it was probably for the better that I went this year with a much-less-pregnant companion.

Like several of the mental facilities I have visited, Kings Park Psychiatric Center is a gigantic sprawling campus (521 acres!). I barely scratched the surface on my first visit, and maybe am now half-way through seeing everything after my second. Once the snow thaws, I’ll most likely be back for my third.

Sometimes it’s a breath of fresh air to take a walk through the woods and not have to worry about the police showing up.

Fireplace Jenga, anyone?

Hidden away in the forest are a small collection of ruins from the Cornish Estate (otherwise known as Northgate the the people who lived there). In 1917, Edward J. Cornish and his wife, Selina, purchased the 650 acre estate from a Chicago diamond merchant Sigmud Stern, who had built the estate 5 years earlier. At the time, the area was subject to intense mining projects, ones that threatened to destroy the face of nearby Mount Taurus. Edward, whose home was close enough to the quarries that it shook with every blast, began to worry about protecting his property as his health began to fail in the 1930s. He offered his estate for sale to the Taconic State Park Commission in 1936, however they declined claiming that the site was “not at all adaptable for a park area,” despite developing parks on several properties nearby (I’m going to take a wild guess that they soon regretted that decision).

Tucked away in the quaint township of Hamburg, New Jersey, down the street from Granny’s Pancake House, and on the aptly named Gingerbread Castle Road, lies a fairy tale castle straight out of a child’s dream – or it used to be, at least.

When one thinks of Cape Cod, beaches, sail boats and quaint cottages usually come to mind…unless you grew up there like me, then you think of catnip smoking, Robitussin-chugging derelicts who steal used cars as a method to curb boredom. In either case, Cold War spy barracks usually doesn’t come to mind.

Radar station (aka spy tower) still in use by the FAA today. Wave to Big Brother everyone!

The North Truro Air Force Station was one of the first of twenty-four stations of the Air Defense Command radar network – which was a network essentially created to spy on the Soviet Union immediately after they tested their first atomic bomb. In 1948, the Air Force began construction on these sites around the periphery of the United States, with North Truro AFS being completed in 1951.

Dundas Castle has been on my list of places to visit for a while, but I had been holding it off until the warmer months, as I could imagine nothing more magical than a fairy tale-looking castle surrounded by lush green foliage…and I certainly wasn’t wrong.

A lot of people have asked me where I discover these abandoned places that I visit. Sometimes I just stumble upon them. Sometimes it’s from internet research. But back when I was dating, I received a lot of recommendations from online dating. I had a little mention in my profile about how I liked visiting abandoned places, and all of these men came out of the woodwork asking me if I knew about such-and-such place. Their attempts at breaking the ice were almost always ignored (sorry fellas), but I wrote down all of these places, and called up someone else to see if they wanted to visit this new place I just heard about. Letchworth Village was one of those places. Thanks OkCupid – at least you were good for something.

The girls’ campus, 1922

Letchworth Village, officially known as Letchworth Village Home for the Feeble Minded and Epileptics, opened its doors in Thiells, NY in 1911 with a 130 buildings located atop a sprawling 2,362 acre lawn. It was named after William Pryor Letchworth, a noted humanitarian and philanthropist, who was familiar with institutional conditions. The hospitals original intentions were noble, aiming to provide the utmost quality in care for the patients. Read More